Islands of Adventure

So it was about that time to go somwhere for this project. Jason and I have known each other for a while now and are from the same town, Delray Beach, Florida. We had planned on just going home to see our families and taking it easy over spring break. So its Friday, and our very cool teacher had cancelled our last class of the day, so we were officially on vacation. The master plan was to wake up early Saturday morning to go to Islands of Adventure and take some pictures for the web page. As it started to get late on Friday we quickly changed our plans. Saturday became Sunday, which, in turn became Monday and not much later became Tuesday. So Tuesday it was, finally the "vacation" was under way.

The plan was to wake up pretty early, hit Islands of Adventure during the middle of the day, then go the rest of the way home to catch the Less Than Jake/Bad Religion show that night. Well, pretty early turned into moderately early without much effort. We gassed up our cars, got cash out of the atm's, and picked up some breakfast for the drive. I believe my breakfast of choice that morning was some Nesquik Chocolate Milk and some EL Fudge cookies. We finally got on the highway, for what would be, without a doubt, the worst part of the trip, the drive. I hate driving long distances. It doesn't bother Jay so much, but it drives me insane. We were going to be in Delray for a while afterwards, so we had to drive separately. That sucked.

Fast forward to about two hours later and there we are paying 7 freaking dollars for our cars to enjoy the theme park. Jay had never been to Islands of Adventure and I had been twice. Upon arriving we were discouraged at the amount of people that were there. I had checked spring break times of Florida schools and had thought we would be safe from crowds. I didn't, however, count on the massive amounts of out-of-staters. Oh well, that's the way it goes. Buying your tickets at the door is a great precursor to one's stay at a theme park. I think we stood in line to get in longer than we waited at any of the rides. Not only did we get to stand in line for a long-ass time, we were also informed that we were neither heroes nor special. Apparently, if you're a hero you get to stand in the short lines to get in. We left our super-powers in our cars.

We finally got into the park. Woo Hoo. If you've ever been to the park you know that the first thing you gotta do is ride the Hulk. The Incredible Hulk is arguably the best ride in the park. It's one hell of a roller coaster. Unfortunately, everyone seems to know how cool the Hulk is because everyone is waiting in line for it. We probably wait about 30 minutes, which sucks. At least we weren't the suckers that wait in line for the first row. I don't know what those people are thinking. Basically, the Islands of Adventure are divided up into six islands. The Hulk is on the Marvel Super Hero Island. It's probably the best in the park.

We ended up riding the Hulk about 8 or 9 times that day. It is a one hell of a ride. The beginning starts out with you creeping slowly out of this tunnel then all of a sudden shooting out of the top. Check out Jay's extreme camera skills with this shot of our exit. Our persistence was mostly fueled by the fact that there is an automatic camera that takes pictures of you at this one point in the ride. Well, when you make funny faces and poses when it takes a picture it can get pretty amusing. There's always a catch though, right? They apparently want you to pay like at least 13 dollars for the smallest picture you can buy. My ass we were gonna do that. So we tried to take a picture of the picture it takes of you. Some 15-year-old kid chided us for doing so, but he didn't want to move to actually make us stop. Thinking we bucked the system, we happily moved on. After we got the pictures developed we saw the joke was on us. In true profiteering fashion they must have some screen that makes it impossible to get a good picture of your picture. Bastards. Oh well, since I'm done talking about the Hulk check out this cool Hulk Exit sign.

After we got off the Hulk, we started ambling around and ran into an arcade. This is a sweet arcade full of up-to-date games. People say they gouge you at the food places. While that's true, this arcade is a much bigger money pit. Think about it, all the machines are over-priced to begin and by actually playing any of them you it keeps you out of the park. They make money while clearing space for everyone else to enjoy the park. What a racket. I wanted to go in because I knew they had this soccer game where you waste a dollar to get like 5 shots on this thing that isn't even accurate. Who cares though, it's soccer.

So we walk in and immediately get greeted by a Virtual Tekken 3 machine. We were wary at first, but we've spent countless, countless (you have no idea) hours playing the Playstation version, so we had to do it. Jay went first because I said I didn't want to do it. So he deposited his 2 dollars and tried to pick a guy. He ended up choosing Yoshimitsu because he had no idea how to actually choose his usual character (Jin). Oh well, but I got some pictures of him mid-fight, cool stuff. Then it was my turn. I put in my 2 bucks and got to choose the character I wanted to be, Lei. It's a pretty good workout doing this stuff, not to mention gives you a good lesson in not caring what everyone else thinks. Jay also got some pictures of mid-fight. As you can see, I was clearly kicking ass. Apparently, Jay thought it would be funny to get some pictures of the people who were watching me fight, very good idea. Look at these people, I mean damn, just look at them. The best part is, that they weren't even there together. They look like they go good together to me. Like m&m's and ham. Anyway, on to Dr. Doom.

Dr. Doom is a highly underrated ride. The ride looks like one of the ones where they take you all the way up and drop you. It's a little different though. Instead of dropping you it shoots you way up and you kind of yo-yo your way back down. Sure all the action takes place about 4 seconds into the ride, but there is rarely any wait. Plus, if you're on the right side of the thing, you can get a killer view of the park. Or, you can do what Jay did and almost drop your camera and get a killer view of your feet. To each his own, I guess.

Apparently, there's some sort of underground baby black market going on in the Dr. Doom area of the park. I don't know what the deal is, but I have documentation to prove it. Not only did we get to enjoy the ride numerous times, we also go to meet Dr. Doom himself. As you can tell, I'm absolutely elated to meet the Doom Bots. But let me tell you this, these guys won't budge. I mean they put those English guards to shame. Jay tried to break the ice with Dr. Doom by telling him a joke. We both now know that being unfunny will get you a swift beating at the hands of Dr. Doom.

So on we went to Spider Man. As you can tell the majority of fun stuff at the park is all in the Marvel Super Hero Island. This travel log will be extremely weighted in its favor. Spider Man is a bad-ass 3-D ride. Even the place that you wait is pretty interesting. They went to great lengths to try and keep your mind off the wait. Jay got this picture of a sign they had there we though was funny. I should restate that: He got most of the sign. The premise is that you're testing out some kind of new vehicle to take pictures or something. I dunno, but its cool. It's amazing how you can really feel like you're falling or like stuff is coming right at you. They had the typical bad guys and the animation was incredible. It was very fun but the wait was always long for this one, so we only did it twice.

Click here for the exciting conclusion.